BusinessDay contributing editor

Praise for Neville Wran appears universal, from all factions and both sides of politics. The well-chronicled achievements were indeed immense. Mind you, so too were those of Sir Robert Askin when he died and was given a State funeral.

At a time when the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption is under attack, when what is acceptable behaviour in politics and business is evolving, it would be wrong amidst the praise of Wran to overlook what he did not do, a sin of omission that would no longer be acceptable: clean up a notoriously corrupt state.

At best, Wran was blind to the blatant organised crime and corruption that characterised Sydney during his time in politics. It is most unlikely anyone as intelligent as Wran could be that blind. Those close to him will swear that Wran was not himself corrupt and he was not found to be. So somewhere in between the possibilities of blindness and corruption there remains the suspicion that he was merely soft on corruption and organised crime, that permanently closing illegal casinos and cleaning up a rotten police force weren’t high on his list of priorities.

When the copious eulogies fade, Wran’s leadership may be seen as a step in the evolution of government - the middle path of a politician not prepared to make powerful and ruthless enemies by pushing too hard against them when the electorate itself didn’t seem to mind.

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In Askin’s time it was apparently acceptable for the Premier to be corrupt – for the bags of money to be an open secret, for knighthoods to be sold, to become conspicuously wealthy in office.

Wran’s decade was an improvement in that the Premier was not himself corrupt, but was not held accountable for the corruption around him. Incredible as it might seem with the sensibilities of 2014, it wasn’t demanded of a Premier three and four decades ago that he cleanse a crooked system.

The election of Nick Greiner marked another step forward: a Premier who was actively anti-corruption, who established the ICAC. The electorate no longer wanted a government that was soft on organised crime. Yet it still took an independent MP, John Hatton, to force the minority Fahey government in 1994 to set up the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption.

And now we’re moving on again, continuing to evolve in what we might regard as acceptable behaviour. The current and recent ICAC investigations have broken open the political process to the disinfecting power of sunlight, laying bare the jobs for mates, the mates for jobs, the influence peddlers and buyers, the grubby favours and deals. From the outright stench of the Obeid and MacDonald relationship to the lingering odour of the lobbying by and business plans of Sinodinos and Di Girolamo, the ICAC hearings should mean NSW politics will not be the same. Gift horses will indeed be looked in the mouth. The career paths of politicians, machine men and lobbyists should become delineated.

We’ve come a very long way from the time of Premiers Askin and Wran. Many citizens have forgotten or weren’t living here or were too young to appreciate just how crooked NSW was all those decades ago. The symptoms of corruption – most obviously, the numerous illegal casinos – were not even hidden. Thanks to legal federal police wiretapping, Wran’s Corrective Services Minister, problem gambler Rex Jackson, eventually was jailed for selling get-out-of-jail cards, but despite having the evidence, the government had to be pushed and prodded into action by Fairfax journalism.

Given what was known about Jackson, that now seems incredible. The gift of a $3,000 bottle of wine – if such a thing had existed back then – would not have broken the surface, let alone caused a ripple.

That somewhat devalued statesman, J. Malcolm Fraser, is entitled to a share of the credit: he improved the Federal Police, and initiated the Costigan Commission, the National Crime Authority and the system of Special Prosecutors that led, in the Hawke period, to the Office of Director of Public Prosecutions.

Federal authorities thus supplied much of the initial impact in New South Wales in 1985:

Vast quantities of Federal phone taps, obtained in the pursuit of drug-traffickers and handed over to local police, precipitated the biggest clean-up of corrupt police in NSW history.

The National Crime Authority (NCA), a joint Federal-State exercise, recorded a number of significant arrests, and made a continuing impression on organised crime in New South Wales in 1986.

The establishment of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) by the Hawke Government was seen as the greatest advance in administration of criminal justice since 1901: it removed from Federal politicians the power not to prosecute.

The fact that the DPP was prepared to prosecute a judge, and the federal tap that resulted in the prosecution of a former NSW Cabinet Minister, should have salutary effects on the judiciary and politicians.

Federal authorities recovered some hundreds of millions of dollars from bottom-of-the-harbour and other tax frauds.

There were also encouraging NSW local initiatives:

The Police Department's Internal Security Unit (ISU) was targeting up to 100 corrupt police, according to one officer.

The Police Board is reported to have plans to break the power of a traditionally corrupt enclave within the Criminal Investigation Branch.

The Government has set up a Drug Law Enforcement Bureau, a Drug Crime Commission, and has brought down legislation to close supposed loopholes that allowed 187 illegal casinos to operate in Sydney.

A former chief stipendiary magistrate was imprisoned after having been found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

There were earlier inquiries and commissions. (Notably the Lusher Royal Commission into police administration was not charged with pursuing police corruption, but managed to land a few blows anyway.) But the attitude of the Wran government tended to be that reports of corruption were a political embarrassment, rather than signs of an urgent and serious problem that demanded immediate and genuine action.

That it could be so, that Neville Wran could be such a successful and popular politician in such a climate, now seems a mystery.

The evolution has been far from easy. The birth of a decently empowered ICAC was itself a close run thing, according to Bruce Hawker who was chief of staff for the then-opposition leader, Bob Carr, in 1989 when Attorney-General John Dowd and Greiner’s corruption chaser, Gary Sturgess, were proposing its creation. Writes Hawker:

“With Labor now in opposition and on the back foot over some of the things that had happened in its 13 years in office, ICAC was seen by many in the party as a vehicle for the Greiner government to mount an ongoing attack on Labor identities. It would, they said, be a standing royal commission into Labor..

“I can still recall the delegations of MPs and former ministers coming into the Opposition offices in Parliament House to pressure Carr into pulling ICAC's fangs. It came to a head at the National ALP Conference in Hobart when senior figures, mainly from the right, told him what he must do. To his eternal credit, Carr stood up to them all and said he would not block a piece of legislation for which Greiner had a clear mandate – the Liberals had campaigned strongly on it in the 1988 NSW state election.”

We have come a long way. The conservatives hacks who would like to end the evolution, to reverse it by limiting the sunlight being shone on politics, threaten to do the state a great disservice. Before taking a backward step, remember what the place was like and wonder how it was tolerated by the man being held up as a political hero of so many.

Michael Pascoe is a BusinessDay contributing editor

18 comments

Let's be clear. ICAC is not an improvement. All it does is investigative. Until ICAC has prosecutorial powers, it will continue to be derided as a toothless laughing stock.Do you think Obeid is quaking in his boots about ICACs findings against him? No. Reason, because he knows that the chances of his being successfully convicted continue to be next to nothing.How about some proper reform?

Yeah, didn't think it was a priority.

Commenter

greg

Location

Date and time

April 23, 2014, 2:27PM

Greg,That's ICAC's success too. Because it can't prosecute it doesn't need to have as high a bar for evidence taking. it is in fact a stepping stone designed exactly for that purpose.

eddie obeid would not be in ICAC now if it could prosecute because they still don't have anything to prosecute him on yet. but that's not to say it hasn't been effective in another way.

Commenter

Econorat

Location

Sydney

Date and time

April 23, 2014, 4:00PM

Well done Michael, Neville Wran said that the media would come out with stories like this. Let it go and let his family live with his memory. Poor form indeed.

Commenter

Dazzaw

Location

SYD

Date and time

April 23, 2014, 2:31PM

Most politicians in NSW have been products of their time and what the community will allow them to get away with. If people in NSW genuinely want honest pollies, then they should elect a few more honest ones like John Hatton and Ted Mack. How anyone could have voted for Eddie Obeid just astounds me.

Commenter

Kali

Location

Date and time

April 23, 2014, 2:51PM

Gee there seems to be a lot of crooks in NSW now and in the past.

Commenter

Phil

Date and time

April 23, 2014, 3:04PM

One of your best all-time articles Michael though you could have added a few lines about the severity of defamation laws in our thin-skinned country.

Commenter

Tom

Location

Date and time

April 23, 2014, 3:22PM

fair comment , but I'm more concerned about the mess the Newman Government is making of Queensland , and the mess the Abbott Government is making of Australia

Commenter

John

Location

Wynnum

Date and time

April 23, 2014, 3:29PM

The mess Newman is making? Fair go. It was Anna Bligh and Labor left us with a massive debt in the order of $80 billion. Federally Labor left us with what $400 billion. And you're worried about a coalition government trying to fix the mess??Beggars belief. Oh and just by the way It's not nice to denigrate the dead. Mr Wran did a lot of good so shame on Mr Pascoe and shame on anyone that supports this trash journalism.

Commenter

Ben

Location

Windaroo

Date and time

April 23, 2014, 4:25PM

Wran was Premier 30-40 years ago. Judging him by today's standards is unfair. The fact that Wran was himself not a crook was a huge improvement on the standards of his time. As for cleaning up the cops, it is true that he didn't try, but there was little appetite to clean them up among Wran's Labor colleagues. It was just thought to be too hard.

Commenter

Bam Bam

Location

Bedrock

Date and time

April 23, 2014, 3:37PM

too soon to mention his failing I suspect ... queue the emails from the Labor faithful ...